Expert claims Trotter’s body not dead for very long

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The body of Melissa Trotter wasn’t exposed to the elements for more than five days, a forensic pathologist testified during the second day of convicted killer Larry Ray Swearingen’s hearing.

However, prosecutors regard the expert’s testimony as “flawed,” and plan to challenge his opinions when the hearing resumes at 9 a.m. today in the 9th state District Court of Judge Fred Edwards.

On death row since 2000, Swearingen, 40, contends he could not have murdered the 19-year-old Trotter because he was in the Montgomery County Jail on Dec. 11, 1998. Trotter was last seen alive on Dec. 8, 1998, and her body was found 25 days later in the Sam Houston National Forest on Jan. 2.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the hearing to evaluate Swearingen’s belief that the condition of Trotter’s heart, lung and nerve tissue samples would prove he did not abduct and strangle the Willis college student.

On Tuesday, Dr. Lloyd White, contract pathologist with the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office in Fort Worth, examined more than a dozen “micrographs” of the tissue sample slides from Trotter’s autopsy and repeatedly told defense attorney James Rytting they were “well preserved.”

White noted an “absence of decomposition” among the microscopic samples, otherwise the slides would have contained a “red-purple smudge and nothing visible,” he said.

When asked for a time frame for the samples, White established five days as the “absolute” maximum. But, in almost every case in which he was presented a photograph of tissue samples, he said the condition of Trotter’s body was consistent with one to three days of exposure.

“The body was not dead for very long,” White said.

Defense attorney Stephen Jackson said that proves it was “scientifically impossible” for Swearingen to have killed Trotter.